It’s all connected.

All over the world.

For. Years.

Green America covered a rally in Paris, France back in 2015, highlighting the connection between climate solutions and black lives.

Sarra Tekola, a climate justice and Black Lives Matter campaign activist, was one of those speaking about these connections in Paris. “When you think about a cop shooting you, it’s an immediate death,” she explains. “But climate change — with [related] pollution that’s mostly in our backyard — is still killing us. Respiratory diseases, asthma, and various cancers are slower killers, but connecting them to Black Lives Matter is really important.”

And what are primary comorbidities, contributing to COVID-19 severity? Yeah, respiratory conditions.

Ayana Elizabeth Johnson, a marine biologist, policy advisor, and much more (below the quote) says:

People of color disproportionately bear climate impacts, from storms to heat waves to pollution. Fossil-fueled power plants and refineries are disproportionately located in black neighborhoods, leading to poor air quality and putting people at higher risk for coronavirus. Such issues are finally being covered in the news media more fully.

By Ayana Elizabeth Johnson 
Ayana Elizabeth Johnson is a marine biologist, policy advisor, and Brooklyn native. She is founder and CEO of the consultancy Ocean Collectiv, founder of the non-profit think tank Urban Ocean Lab and co-editor of the forthcoming anthology “All We Can Save: Truth, Courage, and Solutions for the Climate Crisis.”

She also points out another problem/connection:

But this other intersection of race and climate doesn’t get talked about nearly enough: Black Americans who are already committed to working on climate solutions still have to live in America, brutalized by institutions of the state, constantly pummeled with images, words and actions showing just us how many of our fellow citizens do not, in fact, believe that black lives matter. Climate work is hard and heartbreaking as it is. … When you throw racism and bigotry in the mix, it becomes something near impossible.

Ayana Elizabeth Johnson

You know who else weighed in? The whitest girl on the planet, Greta Thunberg:

Climate change. Pandemics. Justice. These aren’t competing problems, fragmenting us; they’re a tattered web, waiting for all of us to repair all the damage to the same one web we’re all parts of.

A WRITING PROMPT FROM ME TO YOU: Write about several problems that are all one problem.

MA